Skype Hacked in Name of Pro-Assad Syrian Activists

The website and social media accounts of the voice-over-Internet calling service Skype apparently were hacked Wednesday and briefly published messages accusing Skype's owner, Microsoft Corp., of spying for "the governments."

Skype's Twitter and Facebook pages and a page on the company's official blog all carried messages urging people to avoid Microsoft email services because "they are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments":

A page on Skype's official blog, since removed, accused its owner, Microsoft Corp., of government spying.NBC News

By 5 p.m. ET, the blog and Facebook pages had been taken down, but the messages remained on Skype's Twitter page:

A page on Skype's official blog, since removed, accused its owner, Microsoft Corp., of government spying.NBC News

One of the Twitter messages carried the hashtag #SEA, which is used by the Syrian Electronic Army, a collective of online activists that supports Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Why the Syrian Electronic Army would have attacked Skype remains a puzzle, as previous hacking campaigns in its name have targeted news organizations it considers friendly to rebel forces fighting to overthrow Assad.

But the references to "monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments" could refer to disclosures in July by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden that Microsoft had provided the NSA and the FBI with encryption workarounds to gain access to Skype video calls, Outlook Web chats and email, and information stored on Microsoft's cloud-based SkyDrive.